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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1853405, member: 289"] [I]The Offensive Line[/I] So Syracuse is blessed with a lot of guys we’d like to see with the ball in their hands. But they aren’t going to go far, (or get the ball in their hands), unless the blockers up front give the budding superstars behind them a chance to show what they can do. One poster suggested that it won’t matter what happens up front because we’ll get the plays off so fast and get rid the ball so fast that the blocking won’t matter. That’s as naïve a statement that has ever been uttered about the game of football. I remember when Houston, under John Jenkins, was threatening to score triple digits against somebody and they went to Miami to play “the U” with Warren Sapp and his friends. Miami took apart Houston’s offense like a mantis takes apart a bug. They kept the quarterback on the run all day in a 40-10 ‘Cane win. What’s up front always counts. We’ve certainly got size upfront, based on the spring depth chart, (the fall one isn’t out yet). The projected starters are 6-5 318 Michael Lasker and 6-7 330 Jamar McGloster at tackles, 6-4 300 Aaron Roberts and 6-3 321 Omari Palmer at guard and ‘little’6-3 284 Jason Emerich at center. That averages 6-4 311 pounds. I remember being impressed with our first offensive line that averaged 250 pounds per man in the early 80’s. The biggest guy weighed 286 pounds. The Cherry Bowl group that helped turn things around in ’87 averaged 275 pounds per man. So 6-4 311 is impressive. It’s also average these days. The ACC average for an offensive lineman is 6-5 304. Duke is the ‘lightest’ at 6-6 291 and Clemson the heaviest at 6-4 312. Georgia Tech is the strangest with four guys between 281-299 and a young man named Shamire Devine, who is 6-7 386. They have to have some guys who can get out on the edge to block the option. I think all those guys probably weight less than that now. Dino Babers wants speedy linemen, too. The current roster on SU athletics shows Lasker is now 312, Roberts 280, Emerich is up to 293, Palmer is down to 315 and McGloster went all the way from 330-328. I assume the new weights were at the beginning of fall practice. I’m sure they are all less than that now that they’ve been through camp. I don’t know how much Babers goes for wide running plays, pulling guards, etc. It may be enough to just drive block for the runs and circle the wagons for passes. But you still need quick feet. A million dollars seems like a lot until you give everyone a million dollars. Really big guys used to be rare. But now that they are all really big guys, the difference is in how quickly they can move their feet and get in postion to make a block, (or a tackle). As Bedford Forrest used to say: Git thar firstest with the mostest”. If you get there first, you’re likely to have the most as well. After the Cherry Bowl group, we had a long stretch where we seemed to have excellent backfields and receivers but mediocre lines. We had trouble sustaining drives and our best plays seemed to be quarterback scrambles on third down. Then in the G-Rob era, the greatest skill of our linemen seemed to be the ability to help our quarterback to his feet while they apologized for not blocking anyone. Conditioning didn’t seem to be a meaningful term to Greg Robinson and there are photos of SU linemen with their gut spilling over their belts. Doug Marrone had been an All-East offensive lineman at SU, (Bob Botzski, now an assistant AD, was the other tackle and nearly as good). He was determined to make the offensive line a strength of the team again and he did it. It may have been the major achievement of his tenure here. We not only had good, strong, well-coordinated lines anchored by NFL prospects like Justin Pugh and Sean Hickey but we always seemed to have 3-4 guys coming back from the previous year’s line to bring the new guys up to snuff and continue the new tradition. That all ended in 2014, when injuries cut through the line like a scythe, leaving it a shambles. That didn’t happen last year and we had a veteran line, full of juniors and seniors. But they were mediocre at best. All of Doug Marrone’s work had been destroyed. Now we have two starters returning from a mediocre line, both on the inside. Roberts and the two big tackles, Lasker and McCloster, are the new guys. Emerich has the best reputation. He was named to the Rimington Trophy watch list, which goes to the nation’s best center. But he was one of 59, which is almost half the division. Palmer is changing positons from tackle to guard. He’s also the back-up center, so he can basically play every positon on the line. He told Syracuse.com "I'm like 10 pounds over my playing weight for the old system, which was like 305," Palmer said, "so this new system, I'll probably go even lower." NFLDraft Scout. Com rated him #92 of 218 offensive guards rated, (as NFL prospects). Palmer said of McGloster: “He learned the playbook very fast," Palmer said. "He's a great effort guy. He's very athletic for his size. He hasn't really been playing football that long, so you get the right O-line coach, which I feel Coach Lynch will be, to bring him up and teach him and make him the player he can truly be, it's exciting to see." Jamar’s a former basketball player, so he should be able to move well. NFLDraft Scout. Com lists him as #45 of 128 offensive tackles they evaluated. McGloster’s competition is freshman Evan Adams, freshman just about as big as he is, (6-6 334). "The strength, I felt like I could compete with these guys," Adams said. "I wasn't too far out of reach. I didn't feel overwhelmed with that. It was the technique. "Coming out of a small high school where all we did was run power, we weren't focused on technique. We were focused on moving bodies, so definitely when I got up here it was a wake-up call, seeing how these guys move." Roberts appeared to have won a starting job last year. Line coach Joe Adam praised his “muscular, athletic build that allows him to dole out powerful punches in the trenches” and called him “a junkyard dog”. But he lost his starting positon in fall practice to senior Seamus Shanley, who had surprised everyone by his climb up the depth chart as an unheralded recruit. Shanley was replaced after two games but Roberts never got that starting position back. Maybe this year he can put that muscular body to better use. Lasker, a senior, missed last year with a torn labrum, suffered in the spring game. "This offseason has been huge," Lasker said following Tuesday morning's practice. "This is the strongest I've ever been. I feel really good in the way I move, and I think I'm taking a big step… (The staff) likes my physicality, my footwork, my work ethic," Lasker said. "They tell me a lot of good things during film. I just try to fix little mistakes I'm making and don't make the same mistakes twice.“ (Syracuse.com) Lasker says he played in a system similar to Baber’s in junior college. Nunes: “Lasker earned the honor of breaking down team practice during the spring, so it seems like the coaching staff and his teammates think highly of him as a leader.” His completion for the all-important left tackle job is 6-6 296 Cody Conway, a sophomore. He got an education facing departed DE Ron Thompson in practice every day. "I went up against Ron every day. I feel that got me a lot more prepared because I was going against a great D-end, and some of his moves were some of the best I've seen. He had really quick spins and stuff like that, so I don't see much like that." Unless there are two Jon Burtons who are 6-8 319, which seems unlikely, the big guy is the third string tackle on both sides of the line, indicating how thin we are there. Last year Scott Shafer said of him: “"He really has good flexibility – he really bends well. He’s a guy that will give us some athleticism, with size, which is always big." Size is big, that’s true. He may have to do more than “bend well”. The nominal back-up center, (assuming that Palmer might actually replace Emerich if he got hurt), is senior Taylor Hindy, who transferred from Washington, where he didn’t play much. Third string is sophomore Donnie Foster, a former walk-on. Keaton Darney, another sophomore walk-on is the third string guard. The rest are all freshmen: Liam O’Sullivan was one of Baber’s first recruits. He flipped from Cincinnati. He was 6-7 237 at the time with an 80 inch wingspan and 4.85 speed in the forty. He’s now listed as 6-8 271. He could be a prospect for the future but I suspect they want him to keep building up his body for now. Sam Clausman and Colin Byrne were both recruited from one of the nation’s best programs, St. Thomas Aquinas of Florida and redshirted last year. Clausman is now the second strong left guard and Byrne the second string right guard. Both were 3 star prospects, meaning that they project as possible starters at this level. Airon Servais first committed to Bowling Green but changed when Babers got the SU job. He was a two star recruit, meaning either that he’s more of a ‘project’ at best or that he was underrated. Hopefully it’s the latter. Andrejas Duerig is another redshirt from last year who was recruited as a center but is now the second string left guard. He was a 3 star guy. Sam Heckel is also a three star guy but he’s a true freshman so he could red-shirt this season. he switched from Northwestern. Mike Clark is another tall guy: 6-8 304 and another three star guy who as a freshman could redshirt. I suspect the younger guys on the line may eventually prove to be superior to the older guys but we’ll be going mostly with the older guys to start with. Having first time starters at both tackle positions is a concern. Those are the key guys in keeping pass rushers out of the backfield and quarterbacks healthy. Hopefully the emphasis on conditioning will give our guys an edge, as well the hurry-up offense and the quick throws. But if we have problems up front, like every other football team on the planet, we are going to have problems moving the ball with any consistency. A hurry-up offense is a grand idea but if you don’t move the chains, all you are going to do is punt quickly. And with a new punter and our defense, we need to avoid that. Per Nunes: “None of the coaches have commented publicly about any offensive lineman, but called the group "decent" and looks forward to watching them progress.” [/QUOTE]

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